From top to bottom, Battleground 2: Gettysburg (BGG) has the history of Gettysburg down cold. I'll be the first one to admit that. Unfortunately, there's so much fact in it that it is not very much fun.

There is very little praise I can give a game that depends so much on math and numbers. EVERYTHING in BGG is determined by numbers. Movement, ammunition, supplies, landscapes, firefight outcomes...If it's part of a war, then BGG uses numbers to figure it out. I find that feature by far the most annoying, because nowhere (not in the help file, not in the manual) am I told what these numbers mean.

In addition, the visual effects and art look entirely fake. Except for video clips of Civil War reenactments, everything in BGG looks like a cartoon. The battlefield, though riddled with historical locations and roads, looks like it was painted on with watercolors. Firing is depicted by the playing of a reenactment clip and two tiny puffs of smoke between the units involved. Dead bodies are depicted with stick figures in a uniform. If you can picture a cartoon in the middle of a painting, you have a pretty good idea of what BGG has to offer in the visual department.

Worse than even having to stare at an animated painting for hours on end is the fact that very little happens in those hours. Turns consist of four phases for each side, and each phase takes about fifteen minutes to complete. There's two firing phases, a movement phase, and a melee phase (Whatever happened to just moving and attacking?). Although the game allows you to play any portion of the battle you like, each portion has a set number of turns. That means if you want to win, you have to do it within the allotted amount of turns or not at all. To top it all off, you not only have to move your own units around, but you have to wait for your opponent to finish as well. By the time your turn comes around 15-30 minutes later, you'll be snoring peacefully.

Unfortunately, the game does not sport much in terms of sound either. The only music you'll ever hear is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" or "Dixieland", and you'll only hear those just before the title screen. As for sound effects, there is no speech to be found anywhere. The only thing you'll hear at all is the sound of guns firing, shells exploding, and (only during a melee attack) the sound of 200 men screaming. The quality of these sounds is poor and they are few and far between.

Just about the only good part of BGG is the number of options available. You choose the sides you want to play, what sorts of advantages you want to have, and what sorts of rules you want to lay down for the ensuing battle. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what good half of those are because I did not notice much difference when they were activated. I can tell you that setting the advantage slider to 100 in your favor makes all your units obliterate any enemy in one shot, but that's about it.

There is a two player feature available, but I never got a chance to try it out. There are options to play by email (which sounds interesting, but probably isn't much more exciting than playing chess by email), and to play in a "two player hotseat." I'm assuming the hotseat option is for people that wish to play on one computer or the like, but I can't imagine who would have the time or the patience.

A lot of work obviously went into making BGG accurate, and for that I'm willing to give it an extra star in my final rating. Unfortunately, it's so accurate that it's boring. You'd have more fun reading an encyclopedia entry about Gettysburg than playing this game.

Recommended: No

Version Played: Released
Operating System: Windows
CPU: Other
CPU Speed (MHz): over 600
RAM (MB): 128
Best Played With/Intended For: Single Player
Graphics Card Family: Other